Nikon: CSC not impacting DSLR sales

Still growing, especially in entry level, says firm

Nikon has said that it has yet to see any impact on its DSLR sales as a result of the increase in compact system cameras on the market, including its own Nikon 1 system.

Speaking to TechRadar, Jeremy Gilbert, Nikon UK's marketing manager, said, "From our perspective, CSC is not having an impact on our DSLR range. I think what it does is really confirm our initial view that compact system camera is a growing category, and a growing market in its own right."

Gilbert said it was difficult to directly compare the impact of Nikon 1 sales with DSLR as its introduction coincided with the flooding of the Thailand factory.

Nikon was however, reasonably late to the CSC market, facing competition from the likes of Panasonic, Olympus and Sony. "We hadn't found that other manufacturers were taking away business from DSLR, in fact the digital SLR market was in growth.

"From my perspective, some of the other brands who were pushing CSCs actually drove people in store, possibly even increasing the DSLR market.

"Advertising gives awareness for photography as a whole, not just necessarily for one sector."

Market trends

Other manufacturers have predicted that compact system cameras will continue to grow in market share, when compared with DSLRs. In Japan, trends show that CSC sales have already overtaken DSLRs, with recent predictions by Panasonic suggesting that the UK will also see the same trend by 2015.

"We firmly believe that there are three good defined categories, there is overlap, but what is pleasing is that we haven't seen any cannibalisation, where one area of the market is reduced and replaced with another - we've got growth, which is what we want," Gilbert said.

Also rebuffing predictions that CSC would overtake DSLR, Gilbert said, "It's not our prediction, and it's not something I would say. There's certainly a place for SLR. We're planning to grow in all sectors and are not looking to replace or take away from the SLR market at all."

According to the firm, the Nikon 1 J1 had been the number one best-selling compact system camera in the UK for around 12 weeks earlier in the year.

This week it announced a new entry level DSLR, the Nikon D3200, to sit alongside the D3100, which was 2011's biggest selling DSLR.